It is possible for you to make money doing things that you love doing. We do it. We’ve talked to bosses in numerous fields who are doing it. And we absolutely believe that you can too. That’s why we’ve written this whole book: this is us giving you permission to make money—good money!—and do work that you enjoy doing, because you don’t have to hate your job. You don’t have to marry yourself to a corporation in order to feel secure, make a steady paycheck, and someday retire. And you sure as hell don’t have to do the same old thing for the rest of your life.
But you better bet that making money doing what you love is a little more complicated than reprogramming your boundaries and setting up fresh habits for yourself. You actually have to make money doing the thing you love, and that’s where being an entrepreneur comes into play.
In this chapter, we’re breaking down some mindsets, boundaries, habits, and exercises that apply directly to how you sell your expertise and make money doing it. We’ll get you thinking like an entrepreneur about how you make money, brand yourself as an expert, and make moves in your business to help you build a career doing the work that you want to be known for. A boss knows how to do the work, and get paid.
If you don’t know what goes into a formal business plan, fret not. You can start and run a super-legit business without one, and you don’t need a degree or a fancy consultant to help you figure it out. Here’s what you need to know to topline your business vision:
• Write down how much money you want to net this year. “Net” means the money you make after expenses and taxes.
• List your streams of revenue. This list includes all the different services, products, and offerings you sell to make money.
• Write down your job title and make a list of your duties. This is the first step to creating your own personal organizational chart.
• List where in your business you need help. This can include the little things you don’t like to do or big things you need expert help with.
• Write down your mission. You need to know what purpose your business serves to filter and process all the decisions you have to make along the way, but this doesn’t have to be formal.
• Write down a list of how you want to feel along the way. Focusing on how you want to feel in the process of building and growing a business is what separates the fulfilled creative entrepreneurs from the miserable ones.
Farmers wake up early and do the work. They get their hands dirty and plant seeds. They protect and nurture their land for months and years before they’re able to harvest their crops. They look at the big picture and they practice patience. Anytime you begin to feel anxiety or worry over your business, get to farming. (Okay, I’m not literally telling you to buy some land and get some goats—that’s a fantasy for another day.) Wake up early, do the work, build your brand, be a student of your craft, nurture relationships, and share your expertise along the way… that’s farming. If you want to grow your business, your brand, and your bottom line, first you have to plant the seeds.
Hunting is what most people think of when they think about “hustling” for their business. Most creatives feel more comfortable as “farmers,” but if you find yourself hungry it’s a good idea to know how to hunt. Hunting looks like hitting the pavement and asking for work: making phone calls, sending emails, and explicitly telling people how to hire you. The trick with hunting is not going after the kill with desperation but with the confidence and ease of a jaguar that knows what it wants.
You know what a shit list is, right? It’s that list of people who have wronged, disrespected, or simply annoyed you. It’s the people who are energy drains and feel toxic to be around. For the creative entrepreneur it can be the client from hell or a pesky copycat. We personally don’t have a shit list here at Being Boss. We don’t like to focus our energy on what we don’t like or want in our lives. But we do have a “hot shit” list. This is a list of people we admire, respect, and would love to be around more—and we use this list to cultivate relationships and clients. Here’s how it works:
• Make a list of 200 people (yes, 200—we know it’s a lot, but that’s the point). Your list can be on paper or in a spreadsheet.
• Your list can include anybody from an acquaintance you silently admire to someone like Oprah. Nobody is too big or small to make it onto the list.
• Include emails, URLs, and social media handles next to names for reference.
• Begin following, subscribing to newsletters, hiring, or interacting with the names on your list. You’d be surprised how many genuine connections you can make by simply showing up.
Sometimes creative entrepreneurs act as if they have to ditch their personality to be seen as “professional” once they start working for themselves. The reality is that people work with people, and who you are is an asset to your business. It’s not enough to have a service or product to sell—you have to communicate what it is you do and make a memorable first impression on your potential dream client. That’s branding, and it’s a huge part of how you will make money doing what you love.
When you think about branding, the first things that may come to mind are a logo, a color scheme, typography standards, slogans, and taglines. And while a visual identity is an important piece of the puzzle, a brand is so much more than just a logo. A brand sets the tone, intention, and boundaries for what you choose to write, share, show, and say about your business. Your brand lives in your personal style, in your space online and offline, in conversations and emails, and on social media.
Your personal brand helps you create an expectation, and even make a promise, of what you’re all about. It helps define who you are before you ever begin explaining what you do. As creatives, explaining our work and why we do it isn’t always traditional or clear-cut, which can leave us uncertain, apologetic, and even tongue-tied. This kind of stumbling over words risks leaving our potential customers confused and can make us sound unemployed rather than self-employed.
Beyond coming across like the professional you are, you have to remember that business is personal. People buy from people, and the more you can blend who you are, your personality, your values, your stories, and your interests into your professional brand, the more creatively fulfilled and aligned you will feel in your work—from the customers you attract to the projects you pursue.
The tricky thing about branding yourself is that you know, and we know, that there is so much more to you than that first impression. You’ve got passion! And talent! And all the smarts! And you’re going to want to share all those things in an instant. But the point of branding is that it’s the outer layer that lets people (i.e., peers, bosses, dream customers and followers, and not-so-dreamy customers and followers) know what you’re about and what they can expect to learn from you if they care to venture past the surface. An outer layer, unlike what the name implies, isn’t just about how you look or what you wear, though that certainly plays a part. We’re creatives, and many of us are visual creatives, so our own exterior styling can be an expression of our brand. But our outer layer can also be how we tell stories, how we’re intuitive or empathic, how we are great listeners, or how we always cut to the chase.
The outer layer not only makes an impression but also hints at the deeper content and conversations that unfold along with the layers of you and your business. You can think of content as writing, sharing, or explaining what you do, but also think of content as conversations: the working, learning, networking, selling, and sharing conversations that are constantly defining and redefining those boundaries of who you are—and what you do.
Ooh, I feel you. Emily here—I used to say the same thing. But even as I’ve built a number of “not-personal” brands and spent years helping clients decide if they want to brand their business as their name or as something far less personal, I’ve learned an important lesson: all brands are personal. Even if you have no desire to use your name as your business name, or even have your face on your About page, you will still use your values—even if nothing else—to brand, run, and grow your business. And what is more personal than that?
The beautiful thing about on-point branding is that it closes the gap between how others perceive you and how you talk—and even think—about yourself. The more accurately you are able to position yourself as an expert and then deliver on that expertise, the more people are going to trust and buy you. On the flip side, the better you are at instantly articulating who you are and what you want to be known for, from the moment someone visits your website or has a conversation with you, the more you are going to repel those who aren’t a good fit before they can get any further. Good branding becomes the gatekeeper that attracts the kinds of customers, projects, and opportunities you actually want with a big neon “WELCOME!” sign, and repels the ones you don’t want with a big “NO, THANK YOU” sign.
We know there’s more to who you are and the work you do than just the “packaged” outer layer of your brand. That’s where creating content comes in. The content you develop helps you go deeper with your expertise, explore new ideas, and attract those just-right dream customers.
Consistently creating content is one of the best ways you can “farm” your business. The seeds you plant today will come to harvest months or even years from now. So even if you feel that nobody is picking up what you’re putting down, the crops you nurture today will attract the dream customers you want tomorrow.
Types of content:
• Blogs
• Newsletters
• Books
• Worksheets
• Public speeches
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Social media
Can’t think of what kind of content to create? The best advice we can give is to just start creating. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and being boss is about hitting publish before it’s perfect.
Here are a few prompts to get you started:
• What are the questions you already get?
• What kind of advice do your friends come to you for?
• What is the number one thing your audience craves?
• What is the biggest problem your audience experiences?
• What kind of conversations are you already having?
Remember! Your content shouldn’t be a thinly veiled sales pitch. You want to keep it both generous and genuine. Trust that your followers will pay you more when you establish yourself as an expert they can grow to trust.
Creating content will not only help you find your voice and deepen your expertise—it will also allow you to explore new ideas and carve out a niche. For example, let’s say you’re a graphic designer who is obsessed with health and nutrition. You can begin writing more about yoga, clean eating, and green smoothies while using your design skills to make your content visually stunning. From there you may begin to attract a following of yogis and foodies. Who do you think they’re going to call when they need a designer to brand their new studio or design their next cookbook? Another example might be a candlemaker who is inspired by her world travels. Her candles are made with fragrances that remind her of a temple in Nepal or a beach in Tulum—she’s openly sharing her travels and lifestyle with her fans, whether or not they buy a candle. The story behind the product makes the purchase that much more meaningful.
What you write and the content you create shapes, in many ways, what you become.
—TARA STREET, BEING BOSS, EPISODE 56